NIL deals have been celebrated as a game changer for athletes since they were introduced. College men’s basketball has taken a large piece of the pie, with 15.4% of all NIL deals going to the sport. But it is as many as 2000 players’ comings and goings just past off-season, with NIL being the primary focus for many, that has a few disagreeing. Scott Van Pelt, one among them, has a suggestion to curb the increasing worry this is becoming for the coaches.

Pelt didn’t hold back when discussing NIL deals in college basketball on the Field of 68: After Dark podcast. The sportscaster is all in for the athletes earning some money. But his main issue? College basketball has become a free-agent market with players moving schools every year where the ‘highest bidder’ is walking home with the best player. One that a program may have acquired just last season. 

“Player 100% should be able to make money,” Pelt agrees. “But the idea, like right now, that you’re worried about the guy you got in the portal last year who is outperforming, because somebody’s coming with a bigger number is stupidity.”

AP reports there were roughly 700 players who entered the transfer portal 5 years ago. This past off-season, the number was already around two thousand. Programs like Kansas and Auburn have seen an incoming of numbers large enough to make up a whole new roster– 6 and 10, respectively by the season’s start. For Arkansas, though, it was 13. 13 who’d transferred, graduated, or quit. That meant a whole new beginning for Jon Calipari. Pelt suggests a mechanism that ensures players stay longer with a team that has spent resources on them.

“When people use the term ‘not sustainable,’ that’s what they mean: you can’t have to re-recruit your entire roster every single year,” he adds. “There just has to be some mechanism where by you know the guy you are spending your dough on is gonna be around for more than a year.” 

The need for NIL guidelines has been raised in the office, but that isn’t to be an easy process. Teams like Rick Barnes’ Tennessee Volunteers and Shaheen Holloway have left the loss of star players this campaign. Cameron Carr, whom Barnes was counting on for the season, announced his transfer mid-season. Kadary Richmond, who’d left the Pirates due to insufficient funds, would prove costly when he led Red Storm to a win against them.

So NIL has had its positives, but the downside can only be seen on a closer look. Nonetheless, it is a change coaches have acknowledged inevitable and look to adjust.

What do coaches say about NIL? Some would hop on Scott Van Pelt’s suggestion now

Bill Self’s Kansas has probably been one of the most benefitted through the NIL this season. The head coach & co. reportedly spent $4 million on 7 transfers, ranking 3rd in college fund. This roster also included AJ Storr reportedly seeking a million. The team has been delivering, yet, it was a process Self couldn’t get his mind around easily. But he is there now, giving it a new perspective.

“I’m not looking at it just as how screwed our business is. I’m looking at it: ‘This is the way it is. Every business that anybody is involved with, over a course of time there will be drastic change and you have to adjust in regard to that business.’ It is what other coaches say now,” he says.

A few others, like Colorado coach Tad Boyle and Baylor coach Scott Drew, seem on par with Scott Van Pelt’s view. Boyle agrees it is easy to build a one-year roster while building a program? It is “infinitely getting harder.” For Drew, who saw three transfer out and 4 come in, he believes some NIL regulations need to be in place for a programs to sustain. “I don’t think anyone has a long-term plan until someone knows what the long-term rules will be,” he adds.

Some others like Holloway would focus on what they got, coach, fight, and get better.